Benjamin Nerding

My name is Benjamin Nerding and I was born in 1987 in Landau in der Pfalz/Germany, a lovely town surrounded by vineyards and forest, located in the southwest of the country. I used to be a member of the youth scouts with whom I undertook my very first journeys and adventures.

The biggest passion from my early childhood until now is sports. I started playing basketball at the age of 8. Later on at the age of 16, I started running middle distances (800m and 1500). However, the distances in which I competed were getting longer and longer and I finally ended up doing a marathon (personal best: 2h41) and  Ironman triathlon in a respective time of under 10 hours. I love extreme sports and did skydiving, competed in a 12-hour swim contest which I completed with 32 Km, did stunt flying, climbing, and much more…..

I finished my education as a plumber in 2011 and decided to travel through the Alps in Germany, Austria and Switzerland to do something a bit different and keep myself in shape. The travel bug got into me and I started hitchhiking towards Istanbul. The fact that I have never done anything similar to that brought me to the awareness that there would be a dramatic change following soon.

After hitchhiking to almost all European countries

I decided to spend the winter in Morocco and got stuck in Morocco for 1,5 years and experienced the most intense adventures and culture shock in my life! I love Morocco from the bottom of my heart and I am very thankful for each day I spent in this wonderful country!

Later on, after traveling again a bit through Europe and northern Africa, I moved on to the middle east and Caucasus. After hitchhiking in the wintertime through Russia I traveled to Poland and started traveling with Marta for a couple of months.

Afterward, we move to Spain for 4 months together in order to take a deep breath after being on the road non-stop for 4 years, making a bit of money and planning upcoming adventures. At the end of 2015, we eventually hitchhiked from Belarus to Guinea-Bissau. Before heading to the Americas we successfully complete an 8000 km tandem journey through the north of Europe, which was totally amazing! Since then I undertook many more adventures. Just have a look around on my blog.

One of the most important people in my life, my brother, told me once:
If you have a standard life every day is sort of OK or sort of bad. The peaks are as high as you measure it in scale. But if you live a bit crazier you get higher great times and lower bad times. It is just a matter of your own choice. Gotta think about it and then decide!

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